The Lost Ship in Review – Unfortunately It’s A Short Search

Iâ€™m a huge fan of adventure games, and to be quite frank Iâ€™m not that upset when they donâ€™t last for 10 or 15 hours.Â On the other hand, this is the second game Iâ€™ve played in the last couple of weeks that took under an hour to play.Â Still, despite its short running time The Lost Ship was a fun game to play.Â I just wish there had been a bit more substance to the game, maybe in the form of more complex object puzzles to solve or something.Â As it stands right now The Lost Ship feels more like a series of mini-games tied together with a thin plot than a full blown adventure game.

You play an archeologist that gets recruited by his uncle to help find some hidden treasure maps â€“ and by â€œhelpâ€ I mean you do all the work.Â Sadly that is all there is to the story until the very end of the game, so I guess whatever the island youâ€™re on is all about isnâ€™t very important.Â In standard adventure game fashion youâ€™ll tap to move between screens, tap to pick up an inventory item, and tap to select an item to use somewhere on the screen.Â The controls work smoothly enough, but since the developer went through the trouble of giving you this nice map with legible thumbprints of all the locations it would be cool if you could just tap on a location to move to it.Â Of course that would cut down on the already short length of the adventure.

Hidden object phobics need not worry, as this game is strictly comprised of object based puzzles and mini-games.Â I wish there were more of the former, as most of the object based puzzles revolve around finding a key to unlock a door or treasure chest.Â The mini-games are decent enough, and you thankfully wonâ€™t have to pull your hair out trying to solve any of them.Â In fact, most of the solutions can be found somewhere else on the island.Â Thereâ€™s nothing you havenâ€™t seen before in this regards, so donâ€™t expect to be awed by any of them.Â As it happens, this is the gameâ€™s major flaw besides the short length.Â While The Lost Ship provides a solid, fun adventure, thereâ€™s really no sense of originality to the game.Â Personally I feel thatâ€™s probably enhanced by the lack of a fleshed out story.

The visuals are decent, and there are times where there are some really nice details to the scenes.Â On the other hand, youâ€™ll run into at least a couple of locations that look like they came out of a remastered early 90â€™s shareware game.Â They still arenâ€™t bad, mind you, but the level of detail doesnâ€™t fit the rest of the backgrounds.Â The other problem is that the color palette often makes the screens seem muddled.Â For a game that takes place on what seems to be a plush deserted island, I would expect the visuals to be a bit more vibrant and lively.Â On the other hand, Iâ€™m really impressed with the audio.Â The sound effects do a great job of conveying whatâ€™s going on in the game, and the soundtrack is both well written and does a nice job of staying in the background.Â I like the fact that thereâ€™s a playful, bouncy tune during many of the mini-games.

The Lost Ship is a decent adventure game.Â There are plenty of puzzles to solve and the mini-games vary the game play without driving you nuts.Â I just wish there were more to the game.Â You only get a brief glimpse of plot at the beginning and end of the game, with nothing to clue you in on what the island or ship is all about.Â Worse yet, the game feels like it is over before it begins.Â Hereâ€™s keeping my fingers crossed that the sequel is longer like the iTunes description promises.